Elementary students' laboratory record keeping during scientific inquiry

The present study examines the mutual interaction between students’ writing and scientific reasoning among 6th grade students (age 11-12 years) engaged in scientific inquiry. The experimental task was designed to promote spontaneous record keeping compared to previous task designs by increasing the saliency of task requirements, with the design goal of making the relationship between record keeping and inquiry strategies more explicit and visible. Compared to previous studies, this new task design resulted both in a higher amount of record keeping overall and in a higher quality of information, which is interpreted to be a result of increased participants’ metatask and metastrategic knowledge arising from greater engagement with the task. The study found a significant relationship between the quality of students’ record keeping and the inquiry strategies that were investigated. However, this relationship varied depending on the type of inquiry strategy. Strategies that are employed during the design of experiments [i.e., factorial combination and control of variables (CVS)] were statistically related to the number of complete comments (plans and intents), but not with the total number of comments. In contrast, the study found that for strategies employed while evaluating evidence (i.e., drawing inferences), student production of quality records is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective evidence evaluation; in addition to recording high-quality information, students must also review their records (both from design and evaluation phases)

Argumentación y educación: apuntes para un debate

This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Infancia y Aprendizaje on 02/01/2016 available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02103702.2015.1111607The objective of the present article is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to analyse the relationship between argumentation and education with a special emphasis on the difficulties that occur when defining and assessing argumentative skills. These difficulties are related to the thinking patterns underlying the argumentation models and, at the same time, are reflected in the educational models used to train and to assess students’ argumentative skills. On the other hand, this article presents and discusses common and distinctive aspects of the papers selected for this monographEl artículo que se presenta tiene un doble objetivo. Por un lado, pretende analizar cuáles son las relaciones entre argumentación y educación, poniendo énfasis en las dificultades para definir en qué consisten las competencias argumentativas y en los debates que esta indefinición ocasiona. Estas dificultades se relacionan con los modelos normativos de pensamiento que subyacen más o menos explícitamente a los modelos de argumentación y, al mismo tiempo, se reflejan en los modelos educativos que quieren formar a los estudiantes en las competencias argumentativas o que analizan las habilidades de estos estudiantes. Por otro lado, en este artículo se presentan y comentan los aspectos comunes y diferenciadores de los artículos seleccionados en la convocatoria ‘Argumentación y Educación’ y que constituyen este número de la revistaWe would like to express our gratitude to the general editors who helped us in all of the decision making processes and to Anna Sala, for her technical help. This research was funded by the Ministerio Español de Economía y Competitividad [EDU2013-47593-C2-1-P], y [EDU2013-47593-C2-2-P

¿Centrales nucleares? ¿Sí o no? ¡Gracias!: el uso argumentativo de tablas y gráficas

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Infancia y Aprendizaje on 03/12/2015 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02103702.2015.1111605The present paper deals with how eleventh grade high school students and university undergraduate students studying environmental science use evidence to write an argumentative text. They were presented with a dilemma with four sets of data (two pro and two anti nuclear energy). Half the sample was given the data in graph format and the other half in table format. The four sets of data differed according to their complexity. We analysed the structure of argument, the use of the evidence (either provided or their own) according to the participants’ position on the dilemma, and the presence of confirmation bias. Our results show a good argumentative competence that does not seem to be affected either by the students’ educational level or data format. We observed an effect of the complexity of the data in relation to the participants’ positionEl artículo presenta un trabajo sobre cómo estudiantes de Bachillerato y de Ciencias Ambientales usan la información para argumentar en un texto escrito. Se les planteó un dilema con cuatro grupos de datos (dos a favor y dos contra el uso de energía nuclear). La mitad de la muestra recibió la información mediante representaciones gráficas y la otra mitad mediante tablas. Estas representaciones diferían entre sí en su complejidad. Se analizó la estructura de la argumentación, el uso de la información dada y de la aportada por los participantes, en función de su posición en el dilema, y los posibles sesgos confirmatorios. Los resultados muestran una buena competencia argumentativa de los estudiantes que no parece verse influida por el nivel educativo, ni por los formatos de representación pero a la que afecta la complejidad de las representaciones y su relación con las posturas pro o antinuclear de los participantesThis study was made possible through projects funded by the Ministerio Español de Economía y Competitividad EDU2010-21995-C01, EDU2013-47593-C2-1-P, EDU2010- 21995-C02 y EDU2013-47593-C2-2-P. / Esta investigación ha sido posible gracias a los proyectos financiados por el Ministerio Español de Economía y Competitividad EDU2010-21995-C01, EDU2013-47593-C2-1-P, EDU2010-21995-C02 y EDU2013- 47593-C2-2-

Change in Classroom Dialogicity to Promote Cultural Literacy across Educational Levels

In a highly diverse world, cultural literacy is an essential tool for living together in harmony, and dialogic teaching may be a way to promote and develop it among children and adolescents. We define cultural literacy as a set of attitudes (inclusion, tolerance, and empathy) and skills (dialogic argumentation) needed to understand others in our everyday lives. This paper focuses on the effect of a professional development programme to promote dialogue and argumentation to help children and adolescents overcome pre-existing stereotypes and prejudices and foster students’ participation in discussions that contrast divergent viewpoints. This was done through debates on social responsibility issues, living together, and belonging as presented in books and short films addressing the following topics: citizenship, the celebration of diversity, democracy, globalisation, human rights, cooperation, sustainable development, and climate change. After the professional development programme was implemented, we video-recorded two of the 15 student–teacher interaction sessions during the project’s implementation (session #3 and session #8). We analysed the data using a validated coding scheme across three educational levels (three preschool, four primary school, and four secondary school classrooms). We observed moderate gains in secondary education and preschool, but statistically significant gains in primary education

Etude de cas : prise de notes et recherche scientifique

Garcia-Mila Merce, Rojo Nubia, Andersen Christopher. Etude de cas : prise de notes et recherche scientifique. In: La Lettre de l'AIRDF, n°37, 2005/2. pp. 15-18

What Is Meant by Argumentative Competence? An Integrative Review of Methods of Analysis and Assessment in Education

The need to enhance argument skills through education has become increasingly evident during the past 20 years. This need has resulted in an ongoing discussion that focuses on students\u27 and teachers\u27 argumentation and its support. However, apart from the extended competence-based discourse, no clear and homogeneous definition exists for argumentative competence and its constituent skills. To respond to this deficiency, we conducted an integrative literature review focusing on the methods of argument analysis and assessment that have been proposed thus far in the field of education. Specifically, we constructed an interpretative framework to organize the information contained in 97 reviewed studies in a coherent and meaningful way. The main result of the framework\u27s application is the emergence of three levels of argumentative competence: metacognitive, metastrategic, and epistemological competence. We consider this result the beginning of further research on the psycho-pedagogical nature of argument skills and their manifestation as competent performance. © 2013 AERA

Deliberation versus Dispute: The Impact of Argumentative Discourse Goals on Learning and Reasoning in the Science Classroom

Researchers in science education have converged on the view that argumentation can be an effective intervention for promoting knowledge construction in science classrooms.However, the impact of such interventions may be mediated by individuals’ task goals while arguing. In argumentative discourse, one can distinguish two overlapping but distinct kinds of activity: dispute and deliberation. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these discourse goals on both content learning and argument quality in science

The Effect of Argumentative Task Goal on the Quality of Argumentative Discourse

In argumentative discourse, there are two kinds of activity-dispute and deliberation-that depend on the argumentative task goal. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these tasks goals on the quality of argumentative discourse. Sixty-five junior high school students were organized into dyads to discuss sources of energy. Dyads were formed by members who had differing viewpoints and were distributed to one of two conditions: 31 dyads were asked to discuss with the goal to persuade the partner, and 34 were asked to reach consensus. Argumentation was analyzed using a schema based on Toulmin (1958). Eleven different argumentative structures resulted from the combination of Toulmin\u27s basic elements. Students in the consensus group scored significantly higher than students in the persuasion group in 5/6 argumentative structures that included rebuttals. The major implication of the present work is that, similar to Mercer\u27s (2000) claim about types of classroom conversation, not all classroom argumentation tasks promote scientific reasoning equally

El análisis de la consigna argumentativa en la calidad del discurso y en el aprendizaje de las Ciencias Naturales

En los últimos años nuestras aulas de ciencias han incorporado la argumentación como una herramienta para promover la construcción de conocimiento. Un aspecto generalmente olvidado en dichas intervenciones, así como en las investigaciones de las cuales derivan, es el análisis del impacto que el objetivo de la argumentación tiene en la actividad argumentativa desplegada en las aulas. En el discurso argumentativo distinguimos dos tipos de actividad: la oposición y la deliberación. En la actividad de oposición el objetivo es mantener el punto de vista y debilitar las alternativas, mientras que en la actividad de deliberación el objetivo es consensuar un punto de vista a partir de la construcción y evaluación de diferentes alternativas. En el presente estudio analizamos el papel de la consigna en el discurso argumentativo y su efecto en el aprendizaje